Acting Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman warned voters Wednesday that processing and counting election night ballots will take “days” to complete, and no final result will be posted Nov. 8.
Although some voters have already submitted their ballots, Pennsylvania law says election officials cannot canvass the early ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day, Chapman told Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd. Votes cast on election night will be counted after polls close at 8 p.m.
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“The best we can do is just manage expectations and let voters know that election officials need to do their job,” Chapman said in the NBC News interview. “They need to ensure that they’re counting every vote, and delays in results does not mean anything bad is happening. It doesn’t mean ballots are showing up out of nowhere. It’s because of that restriction where we can’t start preprocessing or canvassing those votes until election morning.”
County election officials and Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) administration support earlier pre-canvassing, but changing the law would require legislative approval, according to Chapman. More than 1 million mail-in ballots have been requested, and approximately half have been returned so far.
It took Pennsylvania four days to count the ballots in the 2020 election, according to Todd. The delay and handling of the ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic led some voters to believe there was voter fraud that tipped the presidential election to President Joe Biden over then-incumbent President Donald Trump. However, claims of fraud sufficient to overturn the election in Pennsylvania and other places around the country have been roundly rejected by the courts and election officials.
Pennsylvania is home to one of the most closely watched Senate races in the midterm elections next month, pitting Lt. Gov John Fetterman (D) against Dr. Mehmet Oz (R). Both men are competing for Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R) vacant seat. Polls currently have Fetterman leading, but Oz has been closing the gap. There is also a governor’s race this year.
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Republicans are expected to gain control of the House during the elections, but the Senate appears to be a toss-up.
